Bobby's Dad's thread....

[derek92994]

well it's people like me, that hate people like you....... heh heh heh.....

Simple measures need to be taken with hard drives. Which can almost prevent premature failures completely, warning systems, shut down thresholds, Smart data, and the way they are used in general. One of the biggest things that kill them is dumping multiple files at the same time onto them which just thrashes them to death (multiple IO operation threads), power saving (spin up/spin down), not enough cooling, vibration from other drives in the same bay, excessive defragmenting, sector non-alignment (a very big secret that one which can be fixed with a simple utility, only recently discovered that and it improves performance and reduces wear and tear big time). This knowledge is why I have not had excessive failures and why the hard drive companies hate me because I get so many years out of them.

 

[pennysdad]

..... and why the hard drive companies hate me because I get so many years out of them.

yes, funny that. i was actually talking to a bloke from a hard drive company the other day, and he actually specifically mentioned you by name, as one of the people they hated because you never bought any drives 'coz your old ones were still working!

 

[derek92994]

yes, funny that. i was actually talking to a bloke from a hard drive company the other day, and he actually specifically mentioned you by name, as one of the people they hated because you never bought any drives 'coz your old ones were still working!

HAHAHA!

My smallest perfectly functioning hard drive is a 42 MEGABYTE fujitsu drive, 1990/1991 model.

Listen to the bearings on this sucker.....its a 2 gig drive and yes it still works PERFECTLY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga9KzdgdvXM

Check this one out, this is how you thrash a hard drive, its a 425 meg drive, and yes still working perfectly too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=n9vLE8EXH1s

 

[pennysdad]

well, i just got another external seagate 2tb ($60). see how long this one lasts. fingers x-ed....

 

[derek92994]

well, i just got another external seagate 2tb ($60). see how long this one lasts. fingers x-ed....

Rip the thing out of its enclosure and put it in your pc which has cooling, its just a standard sata drive, they run at over 50 degrees enclosed which is why they fail so early. Those externals cook themselves and have crappy USB controllers on them. I returned 3 external 1.5tb seagates one after the other due to constant clicking and read delays before I finally gave up and ripped it out of its enclosure. To this day the drive is still perfect.

The western digital "green" drive that failed on me was an enclosed external drive, although still got the data off it, will never buy an external again.

I found a broken 3.2 gig drive that makes cool grinding sounds, glad my data wasn't on it when it went haha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjO6sOcg1gs

 

[pennysdad]

won't fit in my macbook pro or ibook, and my iMac has it's own 2tb drive, and i don't use my pc's.
i'm quite happy to leave it in its case till the warranty runs out.

 

[derek92994]

won't fit in my macbook pro or ibook, and my iMac has it's own 2tb drive, and i don't use my pc's.
i'm quite happy to leave it in its case till the warranty runs out.

You know the drill, back it up or play russian roulette

That's what I did for 2 months until I got 6tb to replicate all my data in a separate location.

 

[pennysdad]

..... it's only data.

 

[derek92994]

..... it's only data.

I'm obsessed with keeping mine, my data dates all the way back to 1993. Long history there, PC's were my main hobby before I got into audio heavily.

 

[pennysdad]

... hmmmm, can't help feeling about worried about you.

 

[derek92994]

... hmmmm, can't help feeling about worried about you.

I worry about you too George

By the way.....I just let off a whopping fart, enough to power the house for a day, should save a bit on the electricity bill.

 

[derek92994]

My kitty used to do this....voice box FAIL, thought you might like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw1W9DW26EE

 

[pennysdad]

cute, yes, but sad that they encourage those breeds as they inevitably develop breathing problems as they get older.....

 

[laatsch55]

So the fact I haven't backed mine up since I bought it in 2004 is a BAD thing??

 

[derek92994]

So the fact I haven't backed mine up since I bought it in 2004 is a BAD thing??

Depends if you value the data. If you don't mind it just disappearing one day due to a failure its all good, this may or may not happen, although drives do wear out eventually. I just have audio files and projects that I have worked hard on over the years, 1000's of hours of editing and I don't want to lose any of them.

 

[Elite-ist]

We suffered our first hard drive failure in April 2011. The Dell computer was 1 year plus 2 weeks old at the time of the failure. Geri bought the computer, and LCD display directly from Dell for a great price. We couldn't do any better for pricing at the local retail stores. The main reason for the new computer was Geri had enrolled in a two year Legal Administrative Assistant on-line course. She was taking four concurrent courses with three of them having final exams due that week when the hard drive failed. Some data was retrieved on back up discs she had made while doing the courses. But, it sure didn't help to have a hard drive crap out at a critical time. She received her diploma in June 2013. Maybe we should hang the framed diploma above the Seagate hard drive that shortened her life by a year due to stress.

Nando.

 

[derek92994]

Yeah it always pays to backup onto another drive or CD/DVD-R/Memory stick regularly. Drives are so cheap now that I just do direct from drive to drive, I have an incremental backup which is updated daily to save me a trip to get the offsite drives every day, those only get updated once every month or two.

 

[pennysdad]

how is it, that we, as a species, have developed something that our LIVES have learnt to become dependant on such a stupid little item?
it's all been for nought, as when we die, they'll pro'ly all end up at the tip with all the rest of our possessions.
.... and although all this data has been 'saved', how often in our lifetimes will we ever get to use any of it, once it's all been archived? huh?

in my day, all we had was a notepad, a pencil, and a slide rule.
.... and if you liked music, start up a record collection.

my how things have changed.....

 

[derek92994]

Well if the house burnt down or something else happened which caused me to lose all my vinyl, tapes, family photos, childhood memories that I created on my humble 486 PC I'd be rather upset. But at least I would have the digital backup copies that safely reside at my father's. Yeah not as good as analog or the real thing but much better than having nothing.

 

[pennysdad]

i guess being still young, it still matters, but when you hit my age, you couldn't care less.....
(comes from being a Buddhist now and Zen...)